Study: Poor People Eating Properly would Accelerate Global Warming

A study published in PNAS recommends climate be taken into consideration when drafting national recommended diet guidelines. The study further recommends that poor people should consume vegetable protein instead of meat protein, in line with dietary recommendations for rich countries.

Dietary choices drive both health and environmental outcomes. Information on diets come from many sources, with nationally recommended diets (NRDs) by governmental or similar advisory bodies the most authoritative. Little or no attention is placed on the environmental impacts within NRDs. Here we quantify the impact of nation-specific NRDs, compared with an average diet in 37 nations, representing 64% of global population. We focus on greenhouse gases (GHGs), eutrophication, and land use because these have impacts reaching or exceeding planetary boundaries. We show that compared with average diets, NRDs in high-income nations are associated with reductions in GHG, eutrophication, and land use from 13.0 to 24.8%, 9.8 to 21.3%, and 5.7 to 17.6%, respectively. In upper-middle–income nations, NRDs are associated with slight decrease in impacts of 0.8–12.2%, 7.7–19.4%, and 7.2–18.6%. In poorer middle-income nations, impacts increase by 12.4–17.0%, 24.5–31.9%, and 8.8–14.8%. The reduced environmental impact in high-income countries is driven by reductions in calories (∼54% of effect) and a change in composition (∼46%). The increased environmental impacts of NRDs in low- and middle-income nations are associated with increased intake in animal products. Uniform adoption of NRDs across these nations would result in reductions of 0.19–0.53 Gt CO2 eq⋅a−1, 4.32–10.6 Gt PO3−4 eq⋅a−1, and 1.5–2.8 million km2, while providing the health cobenefits of adopting an NRD. As a small number of dietary guidelines are beginning to incorporate more general environmental concerns, we anticipate that this work will provide a standardized baseline for future work to optimize recommended diets further.

The study authors recommend that national recommended diet guidelines for poor countries be modified to reduce emphasis on increased meat consumption, instead emphasising increased consumption of nuts and fruits.

Results and Discussion

Characterization of Average and Recommended Diets. In general, NRDs are specific to the health challenges from diets found in that nation. For example, India focuses on increasing caloric and nutritional content (21), whereas the United States focuses on reducing caloric intake (22). Compared with average national diets, NRDs generally recommend a substantial reduction in sugars, oils, meat, and dairy (Fig. 1 and Figs. S2–S4). These reductions are largest in high-income nations, where fruit, vegetables, and nuts are generally recommended for replacement calories. These changes are very large and would require significant departures from current dietary patterns. It is likely that any shifts to these recommended diets would occur gradually. These general trends are similar for upper-middle–income nations but with less reduction in meat and several nations recommending replacement calories from dairy. India and Indonesia, both lower-middle–income nations, are the only nations with recommendations for increases in meat intake. This may be partly due to the relatively high prevalence of undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in these regions.

However, even in these cases the increase is small, and replacement calories from fruit, vegetables, and nuts are recommended, as in the case for high-income nations. In general, there is very little change in the consumption of fish in all nations, with high-income nations recommending a small reduction and middle-income nations recommending a moderate increase. Some eastern European nations have recommended diets showing very little change with respect to the average diet; this may be partially due to the fact that these guidelines have not been updated for some time and partly due to continuing concerns of undernutrition in some sectors (i.e., rural communities) of those societies (23, 24).

…

Further Opportunities in NRDs. The environmental impacts of NRDs vary widely among nations because their emphasis is driven by local dietary concerns (Fig. 2B and Fig. S2). Many middle-income nations have greater recommended meat intake than high-income nations, likely due to the relatively high prevalence of protein energy malnutrition and widespread micronutrient malnutrition, especially where large-scale food fortification programs have limited reach. These recommendations could be improved from an environmental perspective by advising the substitution of meat-based with plant-based proteins, such as legumes and nuts, as has been done in most high-income nations. Some nations recommend a reduction of red meat specifically or substitution with white meat for health reasons (31). Although this does align with environmental outcomes by reducing ruminant consumption, this still may lead to a relatively high (lean or white) meat intake, which has still disproportionate environmental impacts compared with other food types (32). Here we have focused on an isocaloric analysis whereby NRDs are altered such that the proportion of the different food categories matches that of the original NRD, but the overall caloric intake is scaled so that it matches that of the current average diet (Materials and Methods). An alternative way to harmonize the NRDs would be to scale the caloric intake not to a country-specific average but to the caloric intake recommended by global guidelines of ∼2,200 kcal⋅p−1⋅d−1 (33). National recommended diets average around that same value; thus, such an analysis would be very close to the analysis of the nonisocaloric NRD (Fig. S4).

The study authors don’t suggest how poor people could be discouraged from eating environmentally harmful meat proteins. No doubt the politicians who run poor countries will find a way, especially if access to UN environmental funding is contingent on achieving eco-friendly adjustments to national diets.

Poor people don’t eat meat in the developing world, for obvious reasons.

If with increasing prosperity they were to eat more meat, it would have an environmental impact – perhaps in clearing cattle pasture from forest, or certainly in the amount of arable crops diverted into animal feed (67% of US arable output goes into animal feed, according to some figures)

You obviously don’t know much about raising livestock. Goat is the most eaten meat in the world, and all they need are tree/bush leaves/buds, weeds and grasses. Chickens can live on bugs, weeds and grasses.

True, but that is not the question. The more relevant issues are things like, how much land, water and other resources it takes to raise an equivalent amount of vegetable protein, whether goats in forest alter the ecological properties so much that the forest becomes degraded, the spread of invasive weeds by livestock, the reduction of vegetation by livestock resulting in decreased CO2 uptake, the amount of fencing required to keep livestock out of crops… On and on it goes. It’s quite a complex issue.

One relevant point is that nomadic tribes can take their livestock with them.

Bryan A – “Goats are actually good grazers for forests as they he’ll keep down the build-up of fuel for forest fires” That might be true if they ate dead wood, or perhaps in savannah woodlands where they kept grass growth down – but that might admit the establishment of invasive species, too.. What about when saplings are killed by over-browsing? Fire is necessary in some forests for proper regeneration. It’s more complex than you make it sound.

“…..Meat sector trends in the developing countries as a whole have been decisively influenced not only by China’s rapid growth in the last two decades, but also by a similar performance in Brazil (from 32 kg in the mid-1970s to 71 kg at present). Including these two countries, the per capita meat consumption in the developing countries went over the same period from 11.4 to 25.5 kg. Excluding them, it went from 11 kg to only 15.5 kg (Table 3.10)…….”.

Griff, table 3.10 in the linked website above shows that 3rd World developing nations eat considerably less meat annually per capita than the industrial countries, but they do eat meat. Third World meat consumption has however been on the rise since 1964 according to data in the table, and the table indicates that the UN FAO expects it to continue doing so.

Griff, please provide the link to a website which refutes what the UN FAO says regarding 3rd World meat consumption. It took me about 2 minutes to find the FAO website. Otherwise, I am interested in knowing why to seem to enjoy making false statements at this website without supporting evidence. Do you get some sort of gratification from doing so? Or do you do it simply out of spite?

[Can’t find the website reference.] Regardless, food in China, above and beyond being a necessity for life, is extremely important as social event. As the Chinese have becoming more affluent in the past 30 years, as salaries have increased, they spend a large portion of that increase on food and the majority of that increase on animal protein both traditional, i.e., fish, cows, pigs, ducks, and less traditional, i.e., exotic animals. It is bad enough that the CAGW crowd wants to end the use of carbon based fuel but to turn the world, especially the developing world, into vegans, is probably a bridge too far even for them. Love to see those promoting these dietary standards go on a speaking tour of China. Also, I don’t see Islamic countries giving up meat anytime in the near future.

A huge proportion of meat stock are pastured on unnamable land, which is either too hilly, irregular, dry,or rocky to be farmed. Animal protein is complete protein; there was nothing in the article above that considered that the eight essential amino acids that humans cannot make are found in animal protein and very hard to get in vegetable sources. They are touting a plan to create a worldwide malnourishment state.

Humans did not have vegetable and grain foods available all year round until the agricultural revolution. Thus, for 99.9999% of human existence we were complete carnivores and only had fruits and berries in late summer and early fall, during which time we fattened up on sugars to make fats for the long winters when hunting was more difficult and calorie demanding. We pork up on starches just like bears do, which is why the modern diet, rich in carbohydrates is exactly wrong. We were never meant to be vegetarian. Meat is digested almost to nothing, as opposed to vegetable food sources.

And, BTW, CO2 is plant food, the GHG theory was cobbled up out of junk science, and CO2 and water vapor are radiating gases that cool our atmosphere after the Sun sets. During the day, these gases are saturated and have no effects on climate. Furthermore, the AGW “science” claims the upper tropical troposphere is warming Earth’s surface. Upper tropical troposphere is -17 deg C and the surface is 15 deg C. It is impossible for a cold body to warm a warmer body, just not going to happen—they must think the average person is really stupid and/or ignorant.

They get away with studies such as the one above because they assume that AGW has been proven and have no interest is checking it themselves to see if the “science” works; which it does not. Their junk science is easy to disprove in multiple ways because it does not work in any way.

The population of Latin America plus Mongolia is less than 700 Million, out of a global population of 7.6B. So you are refuting Griff’s statement by pointing out that 9% of the world’s population has access to meat even though they are developing countries. 9% – big deal. Seems basically everything you say is irrelevant to the big picture Griff was referring to – you know, the billions of people in emerging markets who do not eat a meat heavy diet.

Now AndyG changes his examples and hopes no one will notice. Then he includes India, where for most folks eating beef is against their religion. You can’t make this stuff up. Hahahaha. Ad cluelessness.

Just think of all of that polluted water with all the floating bloated starved to death bodies floating around. How good would that be for the environment ??

This must be one of the first posts that I have read where the concern for the environment, is not about the extent to which the environment makes living safe and enjoyable, but about how nice the environment would be in the absence of any sentient beings who would even know what to appreciate about the environment.

Poor people grow there own meat. Chicken in Indonesia. PNG had chicken, and pig. You can get it at markets, tastes great.
Where I live in Australia, to grow enough crops to replace meat would require clearing most of the the forests left and replacing it with irrigated crops. Vegetarians need to eat a higher food volume, because crops are an inefficient food source. Ask your vegetarian friends.
Griff, go live in a poor area of a third world country, please.

Griff, first you say “Poor people don’t eat meat in the developing world, …”, and then you continue with “If with increasing prosperity they were to eat more meat”
You contradict yourself, yet again. If only you could, just once, formulate a cogent argument.

They’re not fat because they eat meat -they’re fat because they eat glucose, fructose, wheat, potato fried in fat, palm oil derivatives, corn, beer, and ordinary sugar, all too much. They’re also uneducated and often unemployed. All this piles up. If they’d eat meat and not only fat with sugar, they’d be healthier.

It all began by feeding low-quality Joules to slaves.It ended up to a weak food culture. An American meal is some deep-fried potatoes, cola, bun and some fatty acids in between. Go figure.

We didn’t used to have an obesity epidemic. Rich people could afford to be fat. Poor people were skinny.

Thanks to the processed food industry, the situation now is reversed. Poor folks can afford lots of empty calories. They eat too many of those because their bodies are telling them to get more nutrition. They become malnourished and obese at the same time.

Well-off people can afford decent food. They don’t have to work three part-time jobs so they have time to cook decent meals. They go to the gym every morning before work. Then they sanctimoniously advise the poor to eat less and exercise more.

Thank You! And to add to what you said, a “vegetarian” diet is extremely unhealthy, with the poor children whose ideologically motivated parents force it upon them exhibiting diseases that were wiped out a century ago in first world countries, like Rickets.

My own diet is largely milk, salads, meat, cheese. I am slender. My grocery bills are fairly small, as salads are not expensive. Not buying empty calories saves money, as my family taught me when i was a child. I don’t think the bad diets of America’s poor are caused by lack of money. At the grocery store check-out counter, I see foolish choices paid for by obese individuals with subsidies like food stamps (EBT cards). Yes, that’s anecdotal…as is so much that is true.

John,
rest assured obese Americans are not on the brink on protein starvation.

commieBob,
I don’t think it is affording question, even though fat people are often among the relatively poorest. It is mostly a cultural question.

AGW is not,
right, people can eat vegetarian food, i.e. potatoes, palm oil, wheat, cola, sugar, corn syrup, and be totally obesefying themselves. Veggies are healthy, but food being vegetarian doesn’t guarantee healthiness. Plus, there are plenty of different stuff an omnivore gets from meat and thus get sick by vegan food. But I’ve learned it is a cult.

Samuel,
Government always has best intentions and worst outcomes. But is obesity caused by the government, or is it because government has failed among others? I believe the latter.

“Thanks to the processed food industry, the situation now is reversed. Poor folks can afford lots of empty calories. They eat too many of those because their bodies are telling them to get more nutrition. They become malnourished and obese at the same time.”

I remember when I was a kid in third grade, we had one fat kid in the class and 29 little skinny kids. This was about the ratio of fat kids to skinny kids during my years growing up in the fifties and sixties.

Around 1987, I volunteered to teach science at an elementary school where I had third, fourth and fifth graders, and I was just amazed at how many fat kids there were in the classes. There were no skinny kids, just either well-fed kids, or obese kids, about half and half.

I asked myself what was different from when I was a kid to 1987, and “fast food” has to be the difference. I never ate fast food when I was a kid because it wasn’t available back then. That’s all people eat today.

I also think there is something in fast food that is not quite natural. I saw a picture not so long ago where a woman had purchased a regular McDonald’s hamburger and french fries, and she put the items on a plate, with the hamburger opened up so you could see the inside, and it was covered by a glass cover, and this display had supposedly been sitting under the glass for about two years. And to look at the burger and fries, you would have thought it had just been purchased that day. Everything looked perfect and fresh down to the lettuce and pickle, yet all of it was over two years old.

Now what kind of preservative would do that? Apparently they are putting something on their food, and it would be my guess that a lot of other fast food eateries use the same kind of preservatives.

Do we actually know what we are putting in our bodies when we get food from fast food places?

NO, at the beginning of the 20th Century nearly 40% of the US population worked on farms, another large percentage worked in the agricultural business. Most workers outside agriculture worked in labor intensive factories. Those jobs all required diets very high in calories; several thousand calories per day. Problem was as our economy changed our diets didn’t change all that much. We did go from cooking at home to fast food but we still were eating the same number of calories. By 1990 less than 3% of US population worked on farms. Hard physical labor in factories had declined dramatically moving overseas. So we took a society once requiring thousands of calories a day and turned it into a society that seldom burns a thousand calories while most still eat like they do. Europe, especially the UK has similar health and weight problems. Check out the crowd at the next Premier League Soccer or Rugby game. Australia as well.

Well you did limit your area of research to the first world, but I have to say that the most obese persons I encounter in this first world land, whether by their own fault or not, are actually persons from the second and third worlds.
And as it happens, I often eat the very same foods that they do; every morning for sure.
It’s just that I don’t eat any more than I need; it costs too much to do that, and I don’t put eight cubes of white sugar into my coffee.

The British government and its greenie helpers have an interesting twist on this.
They think they can keep the poor skinny and save the planet at the same time.
They do this by their policy on (the vast) food wastage from producers. The idea is to bypass the needy, who might actually eat the stuff, but send all the food – much of which perfectly edible – to anaerobic digesters. In turn, the digesters power the property estates of the landowners – I mean, er, local communities – thereby precluding use of fossil fuels, and thus saving the planet! Starve the poor but save the world! Brilliant!

I just want to say a big thank you to the person on this site, who commented words to the effect of, “all this global warming pseudo science reminds me of the pseudo science of nutrition” — that comment got me interested in the people who are questioning the public health guidance, and so I got into Paleo, Primal, LCHF, and ten years later continue to feel better than ever. So thank you to whoever made than insightful comment, ten years ago, as you changed my life, and the lives of the people close to me.

I am glad that now, cardiologists and expert of all kinds, are working to change the public health advice for the better. This whole spirit of questioning and re-thinking, will hopefully continue to spread amongst the public. People are developing their critical thinking skills.

On that note, there are also some who question our assumptions about how and where we fit into the food chain. There is the “expensive tissue” hypothesis, which suggests we are not vegans, rather, we evolved eating meat and animal fats.

There is also Allan Savory, who I’m sure must have been featured here at one time or another, suggesting that most of the world’s lands cannot do agriculture, but many lands can do grazing, and if we used grazing the way nature does it, and ate meat fat the way we evolved to eat, we would minimise our footprint on the environment, simply by following the system, rather than subverting it. As one person put it, we are “the only animal clever enough to invent our own kinds of food, and stupid enough to eat them.”

Alan Savory was a genius. His demonstration of land use for grazing could increase the size of beef hers and help eliminate malnutrition. Thanks to Mugabe he left what was Rhodesia and the world watched whilst Zimbabwe starved.

That quote is silly. Nature doesn’t just magically give us everything we need. For thousands of years humans have eaten more “naturally” (whatever that means) and the result have been mass starvations and poverty. Only recently, when we have started modifying nature, we have managed to massively reduce starvation and poverty. Maybe nature intended that? She must have given the skills we have for a reason? I can just say that, because, surprise, nobody has actually spoken to this allmighty “Mother Nature” and asked what she intended us to be. Then again, I suspect that she doesn’t actually exist, and is just invention of us humans. Why are we so eager to invent and worship imaginary things like Gods and Mother Natures? Are we so afraid of doing things on our own? Then again just because we “evolved” or were “intended” to do something, doesn’t mean we should continue doing that. The real stupidity would do something that would compromise our well being.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound like Gaia worship. Yes, I love technological progress. The argument about us say, having evolved bigger brains, and smaller guts, over 2 million years, whist eating meat, is really just meant to be a big clue about what our bodies are doing, or trying to do, when processing food. There are of course, yes, also novel things, like coffee, which are arguably beneficial, even if we were never exposed to coffee before. I certainly drink enough of the stuff. So it isn’t an ideology of “natural only”, whatever “natural” is supposed to mean.
Yes, it is true that some people do make it into an ideology of simplistic categories. I don’t mean that here. I guess a better analogy is to say that you design a wing to work with the laws of aerodynamics, not against them. Maybe we can invent better ways to work with our body’s functions and systems and likewise, the processes in the environment. We eat the ruminants, the ruminants eat the fat of their microbiome, their microbiome eats the grass, the grass converts the sunlight… and all that.

Had to google for Ancel Keys. So he’s the guy who proved that eating a lot, smoking and having unfortunate genes made you a good victim of butter. The irony were better if he didn’t live 100 years old.

Ancel Keys’ bogus study led to the high carb, low fat paradigm which is largely responsible for the type II diabetes/heart attack/stroke/Alzheimer epepidemic, while he lived to be 100 yrs old. That’s some pretty good irony.

Many believe in the simple fat-animal-protein theory, because we know all Inuits were killed by fat and animal protein. /sarc

The problem with the study is that the when total calories explained a lot, fat intake percentage was not explaining all. The huge difference for example, between Finland and Mexico, is totally not explainable by percentage of fat intake in calories. Or Finland and Denmark.

Though glad Danes eat a lot more of pork and butter, and yet suffered much less strokes than Finns, “they” tell that the strokes are caused by butter. No, they’re not. They’re caused by a multitude of factors, where eating too much, not eating veggies, and smoking are major factors. Alcohol and war trauma explained something as well. And of course, there are some people who have a genetic weakness; those should take care of their diet to keep blood cholesterol in good shape.

This is the problem with bad stats. You can’t show butter kills, but you’re capable of showing that eating lots of and only butter is deadly, then you claim your veggie ideology is good. And the veggie ideology really rides the animal-fat-police.

ANYWAY, these days you don’t need to guess: you can measure your cholesterols, and you can experiment with different diets. You can optimize your personal diet without using a population-wide standard plate.

Read “Primal Body, Primal Mind” for one of the best and most eye-opening sources of information about diet and health. I’ve been eating differently (hint: not how any government would advise me to) for the last 5 years, and am healthier than ever.

This is eco-imperialism at its worst; indeed the term “ecofascism” would not seem too extreme. And the irony is that they are such exceedingly poor ecologists. They understand nothing about ecosystems.

But the good news is that we can feed people properly if we choose to and, if you believe there is some vague connection, improve the climate. What’s not to like unless you hate people?

Oh, just two minor things from the U.K. this morning – snow (remember, that stuff we aren’t supposed to have anymore) has shut down one of our major airports. And you’ll all be pleasantly disappointed I’m sure to learn that Hilary Clnton’s book has been discounted by more than half to try and unload copies.

Where is that David Viner chap who calls himself a “climatologist” who said some ten years ago that,” Children in the UK will just no know what snow is in a few years…” Some reporter please find him and interview him – can’t wait for his weasel words!!

Well, climate change apparently causes more snow too, so he would probably just blame it again. I mean that was the reason given for record breaking snow in Scotland few years back. So whatever happens he can just claim that he’s still right.

Yes, I love to remind people of quotes like that – AND the ones that make exactly the opposite assertions that replace it to FOLLOW the whims of the weather. Amazing how the “catastrophe du jour” is whatever “bad” weather is currently occurring.

When they tell you “The children aren’t going to know what snow is” because of global warming, when we are having winters with little in the way of snowfall, and THEN tell you “Heavier snowfall is “consistent with” global warming,” when we are having winters with lots of snow, you know that (a) they have no idea what they’re talking about and (b) that their “theory” of human-induced climate catastrophe is pure BS.

“Well, climate change apparently causes more snow too, so he would probably just blame it again.”

I was banned from a forum a few months back for being an EVIL CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER. They’re now going crazy there about the cold weather and snow in North America because it’s PROOF of CLIMATE CHANGE!

There’s a reason the alarmists renamed it from ‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change’ a few years back. The Climate Change gravy train never has to end, no matter what the weather does.

In reality, where resources are scarce, one cow per mother that eats grass and produces milk and a calf a year, is progress that may be necessary to stop the population growth like it has in most of the world.

There is nothing wrong with beans either, but poor people need solutions they know, and that will work without stuff for that you need money to buy them.

They defaced Nazca, so they next should be defacing Uluru, Taj Mahal, or the black rock of Kaaba. I’m sure none would mind. Also important is to remember the atrocities locals did, and possibly put the guilt in wrong direction, if you know what I mean. So Western lax-eater is guilty of Somalian fishers turning into pirates, etc.

StephenP, this brings up the point that there is probably no optimum diet for all of Mankind, and that diet depends on lifestyle, the available food sources, and possibly genetic adaptation to them for a population who have lived for many generations in a given ecology.

This is entirely consistent with the racist theories propounded by the Greens, to the effect that 300 million people who do not own a light bulb do not deserve access to reliable electrical energy because “they are only Indians.” The declared enemies of civilisation are first and foremost the enemies of the poor. Today’s poor and disadvantaged are essentially those unfortunates who have unfairly been denied access to modernity. The culprits include their own governments, caste systems, corrupt leaders, misguided traditions and deeply flawed religious beliefs. At a time when many of these victims have hope of escape into a bright new world along come the Greens and try to slam the door shut. A typical example is the wicked Earth Hour campaign promoted annually in Burma by WWF. Burmese on average enjoy one thirty-sixth of the electricity available to each Australian. WWF wants to deny them even that tiny slice of hope.

For those that believe in the radiant greenhouse gas caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands, The dominant so called greenhouse gas is H2O and reductions in CO2 emissions will have virtually no effect on the total greenhouse gases in the armosphere and along with that the radiant greenhouse effect.

But the reality is that the radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, on Earth, or anywhere else in the solar system. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero.

Humans are omnivores and need a balanced diet which for some includes a variety of animal protien. The best way to decrease animal consumption by humans is to gradually reduce the human population.

I’m confidant enough, that one molecule of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of air that man is supposedly 5% responsible for doesn’t cause the hypothesized heating, to insist that those who claim it does demonstrate with empirical evidence how that happens.

Does anyone know if research has been done (not computer modeling; that’s not research) to determine what wavelengths CO2 emits after absorbing photons at the 3 specific LWIR wavelengths that CO2 can absorb. It seems to me that the absorption/emission sequence would involve energy loss, which would redshift the emitted IR, which if is large enough would prevent other CO2 molecules from absorbing it.

Now take that 0.02 g / m (assuming 50 km atmosphere) and explain how it is able to heat the atmosphere as claimed by absorbing at only 3 specific wavelengths, two of which overlap with H2O vapor’s higher absorptivity, and emits IR at a longer wavelength that is possibly not absorbed by CO2. Or at least point me to research that demonstrates that with empirical evidence (not theoretical calculations). Actually, shouldn’t it be 0.001 g / m because man’s contribution to that 1% is only about 5% (or so I hear)?

Has anyone characterized the emissivity spectrum of LWIR from the earth’s surface in order to determine what percent of energy is emitted at those 3 wavelengths? Well actually at only one of those wavelengths considering the fact that much more abundant and absorptive water vapor likely absorbs most of the energy in the two overlapping wavelengths.

how it is able to heat the atmosphere as claimed by absorbing at only 3 specific wavelength

The Sun heats the atmosphere, not CO2. Or rather, keeps it from cooling continuously as it did if we took it away.

But, when there is one kilogram of CO2 per square metre more, the absorption of infrared increases. This blog is about the consequences. I don’t think they’re huge, but a person wiser than me tells 1kg/m² could increase the surface temperature by half a degree C. When we look at what has happened between 1979 to now, by satellites, we see a trend of 1.5C..2C/century. Some of this should be explainable by the extra 2..3 feet of CO2 in atmosphere (about 80 cm in STP).

Now prove it? No I don’t think you’re interested in accepting proofs – and besides, that is not what it is interesting. For me, it is proven long time ago that CO2 does have an effect and that effect is large enough to appear. The only question for me is that why some people panic about secondary things like the anthropogenic component of sea level rise, or wellbeing of polar bears, and they don’t panic on things like energy price, food price, or inavailability of nuclear power?

man’s contribution to that 1% is only about 5%

Human contribution to the atmospheric fraction of CO2 content is about one third. All the decadal increase is there because of humans. But we’ve been here before and Murray Salby and bla bla.

Has anyone characterized the emissivity spectrum of LWIR from the earth’s surface in order to determine what percent of energy is emitted at those 3 wavelengths?

I challenge you to do a literature search “earth surface emissivity spectrum”. I tell you it emits stuff and the extra CO2 will cause some absorption to happen with higher percentage and at lower altitude/nearer to emitter. And what then! I don’t want to guess.

Sheri

Now the “correct” belief is to deny CO2 does anything?

Whatever. These people are always lurking here. I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t very much a non-sequitur argument for each and every topic/blog entry.

I’m confidant enough, that one molecule of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of air that man is supposedly 5% responsible for doesn’t cause the hypothesized heating, …..”””””

You’ve got a lot of reading to do ahead of you icisil.
The silicon based “atmosphere” that allows you to participate on these pages, has far less impurities in it than the CO2 in earth’s atmosphere.

Single crystal Silicon in your computer, contains about 5 x 10^22 silicon atoms per cc, and common CMOS doped layers in those computer chips have something like 10^16 impurity atoms (maybe B or P) per CC which is one in 5 million impurity level and that insignificant impurity make all of this magic happen.
And both CO2 and H2O absorb or emit, in thousands of distinct frequencies, within those so called bands, and almost none of those individual frequencies will match between CO2 and H2O.

So CO2 and H2O molecules in the atmosphere are not even aware of the existence of the other species.

For that matter on average any one CO2 molecule is not aware that it is not the only CO2 molecule in the entire universe..

It’s nearest neighbor CO2 molecules is likely to be 13 molecular layers away from it and is completely invisible to our lone CO2 molecule. They act alone and are not ganging up on anybody else.

These loonies have no idea of what goes on in most parts of Africa. I have lived and travelled all over Africa for the past 55 years – The reason why many indigenous people rely on meat for protein is because in many areas it is impossible to grow any type of western crops and vegetables besides a little bit of millet and rough cabbage – all rain dependent – yet goats/sheep/cattle and chickens can sustain themselves on the meagre ground cover whilst providing some protein. Despite this, the protein intake is extremely limited. Countries in Europe, the USA and Japan have over many generations, had high protein intake and thus it is not by chance that their brain power and intelligence exceed that of nations with low protein intakes. Most of Africa is being deforested not because of crops but to provide firewood which the greenies seem to ignore despite the C02 produced by burning wood and the C02 problems created by the removal of trees. This article clearly shows that the so-called “scientists” and “experts” are purely agenda driven with so-called ‘solutions’ based on some idea dreamed up in isolation and with no experience or understanding of the realities.

I love expert dietary advice. It led to the grains based food pyramid where Poptarts were considered healthy because they were low fat. It inspired the low fat processed food craze that replaced fat with carbs and salts and low an behold, people gained weight and Type II diabetes increased. Perhaps dietitians like doctors should take a “first, do no harm” approach to people first and their favorite political cause second.

Perhaps people should learn to THINK, read labels and actually take an active role in their own health instead of behaving like puppets and doing whatever the “experts” tell them to. Only then will people’s lives get better. You can’t stop experts from being wrong and/or being greedy. Knowledge is the only defense. There really is no “one-size-fits-all in nutrition, exercise, etc. People have to figure out what works best for them, not the “average” a person.

watching the walmartians waddle by, i can see that people don’t much care about food pyramids because eating is a pastime and social activity- hardly connected with the biological prime directive
in exactly the same way, orgasms are now completely divorced from reproduction.
this ‘what you need’ stuff is the socialist trope.
people do what feels good. incredibly, for most people, typing comments about global warming is not a prime directive- why? it doesn’t get them off!
even everyday conversation has this marxist infiltration ‘you need to leave, sir!’ until the concept of ‘need’ has been inflated beyond usefulness into an empty calorie.
wtf is an empty calorie? those are made of rotten ice and non.pee.review. but marxists need, therefore give it to them.
the world needs a global dietary religion like it needs more pundits zorting. activism is not an industry – it’s a hustle just like palmistry.

I think that shoddy humanoid Archbishop of Canterbury would find this “right on”. Time for a rendition of the CofE hymn ……… “the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them, high and lowly and lowly and ordered their estate ….,……,,

Zimbabwe is the poster child for countries that mismanagement and greed have totally wrecked. It was the breadbasket of Africa under the Brits. Under Mugabe, cronyism and stupidity replaced productive economic management, and the losers were the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s successor is cut of the same cloth, from what we have seen so far. Really a tragic situation.

If we decreased food waste, more people could be fed with the same amount of farming resources/effort.

If we were more intelligent about our food aid, countries would likely require less food aid. Say you are an African farmer, and your area has widespread crop failure. You still have managed to grow more food than you personally need, so you want to sell it. But the UN (or other agency) shows up with a bunch of “free” food (bought from Western countries, even if the neighboring country also has a food surplus). No one will buy your excess, and you are out money. So the next year, you only grow enough for your family, and uh oh, there is not enough food for all the people! Repeat.

As for meat, I have to wonder if there are actually more “potential” food animals than we realize. In some countries, the number of livestock one owns determines wealth. This sometimes has some rather negative environmental consequences, since the livestock may reach unsustainable (in the true sense) numbers. Even in such cases, owners may be hesitant to actually slaughter part of their herds/flocks, because then they are “poorer”. This raises the question: do people already have greater access to meat sources than is commonly believed?

This is just a toxic mixture of eco-fascism combined with pseudoscience. Whatever “environmental impacts” there are of food choices would be local ones and would tend to self-correct. It is also the height of hypocrisy for these eco-fascists to pretend to be concerned about the health of poor people when it is their idiotic Greenie ideas concerning CO2 which are a direct attack on wealth. The greatest threat to people’s health is in fact, poverty.

Non-voluntary government, whether suggesting or mandating any sort of dietary regimen, reflects all of the other one-size-fits-all BS they use to control people. Add to that all of the “green” and vegan nonsense, and people have their work cut out for them to claim any liberty OR justice.

The ‘planet’ is a big thing, and has taken care of itself for millions, billions of years. People can’t actually harm the earth, nor “save” it either. But humans will only continue to exist where they are willing and able to learn and adapt – mostly as individuals, like any other species. Adapt or die.

Oh, goody! Another know-it-all guide to the waste of time spent thinking about what’s best for “others”, meaning the rest of us minions!

You know, humans have been doing rather well as a survival species until someone decided to dictate ‘What Is Best’ because the rest of us peons can’t possibly figure that out for ourselves.

I started losing weight two years ago when I cut one thing out of my budget, because it was a zero return item for the money spent on it, and that ONE item was Diet Coke. Aspartame has to be the worst and most poisonous junk ever invented. So far, I’ve lost close to 40 pounds and I have changed NOTHING other than NOT purchasing that crap.

The people who come up with these benevolent ideas never partake of them on their own. Soybeans and other grain crops require vast acreages of land to produce enough to sell to the markets, and yes, soybeans are an enormous item in livestock feeds. Soy is, as another article a few weeks ago indicated, loaded with phytoestrogens, so are these ideologues trying to turn the world’s population into just us girls????

Humans are an omnivorous species, plain and simple. There isn’t currently enough arable land to support an entirely veggie population, anyway. I see no reasoning behind this nonsense other than another slap from the control freaks. If you want to be a vegetarian, that’s a personal decision. There’s one district in India which has a strictly vegetarian population. That’s THEIR choice.

As much as I love broccoli and watermelon, I also love chicken, pork and beef, so the know-it-alls can stuff it!

I have never understood why greenie Starbucks (respectfully picked coffee beans) puts out for their customers every colored plastic sugar substitutes concocted by the food police. Oddly, the oldest of them; Sacharin, which was the very first product of that totally evil company, Monsanto, is the only one that has never been linked to any negative side effects other than its bitter after taste. It is over 100 years old, and was first manufactured in Illinois in East St Louis.

The most difficult sweetener to find in a Starbucks (to which I don’t go any more) is brown sugar.

Yes there are people who cannot use ordinary sugars, but for the rest of us, it is easy to simply put less of it in our coffee or tea.

Diet anything is just over priced water. I find a dash of lemon juice in plain water, renders it eminently drinkable. Actually rose’s Lime Juice is a perfect taste additive for drinking water. You need so very little of it.

OMG! The amorality/immorality/whatever the affliction is with these people is revolting and terrifying. I thought Hillary was bad and couldn’t understand how so many voters could live with themselves supporting such an unabashed vessel of pure corruption and ugly disdain for the citizens of the real America. Nope. There’re millions of them out there. It’s an epidemic of a social form of leprosy.

Since 1969, the U.S. population increased from 202 million people then to 325 million today. We also increased our per capita consumption of beef, pork, and poultry from 183 pounds annually to 213 lbs. So we increased the population by over 100 million people; increased per capita meat consumption AND the magical part is that we DECREASED the amount of land used for agriculture. Oh, and BTW, a smaller percentage of the median income is now used for food than ever.

The people who pretend they can predict the future ALWAYS ignore future innovation. Malthus did and Ehrlich did.

The gains in agriculture have a LONG way to go. A man named David Hula set a world record corn yield a couple of years ago when he produced an other worldly 532 bushels of corn per acre. The USDA estimated the national average was about 170 bu/acre that year. A decent rule of thumb is that the world average, ex-U.S., is about half the U.S. national average, or around 85ish bu/acre. So the difference between what Hula produced and either the U.S. national average of 170 bu/acre or the world ex-US average of say 85 bu/acre shows how much potential there is for increased productivity in corn yields.

My prediction, FWIW, is that the world will be flooded with low cost food in coming years; meat consumption will continue to rise in the developing world; and we’ll use LESS land to grow animal feed to make it happen.

… by some estimates, 80% of illness in developed countries is diet related and those people generally follow the NRD or food guide which is a commercial documents devoid of health considerations. Beyond that, the title, premise and counter premise of this article are … not sure where to go with it. The cashew industry or palm oil industry are not without critics … it is expected life expectancies in the West will start dropping due to diet despite the reduction in smoking and advances in highly interventionist health care … the average BMI of an American male is 28.6, eventually Hollywood will not be able to gloss over the ugly visuals and brutal reality of this and my prediction is like smoking, the SAD (Standard American Diet) of the American Food Guide will go the way of smoking … eventually this trend includes less developed countries. Dairy consumption in North America being the poster child. Why is dairy in the food guide? … when most humans can’t digest it and it causes significant disease?

This is a case of “Do as I say, not as I do”. That said, many people in India don’t eat meat, and they have survived for millenia. “Survived” may well be the key word – they are alive, but not well off. Whether it is because of their diet or other factors, I don’t know. I don’t see any Indian names in the list of authors.

When all of the rest of the CAGW crowds catastrophes are shown to be false, for the umpteenth time, I’m sure they will find a way to blame lowering CO2 levels on GW… of course CO2 levels have to go down first (hopefully that won’t happen anytime soon)

Several of the things that got me deleted from a University of Aberdeen ‘food & nutrition’ online course.

1. Not least as alcohol was introduced as a noteworthy source of calories in the human diet.
I dared suggest that doctors says its OK to drink because they themselves are fond of a tipple.
How else would it be OK to allow people to take onboard 30ml or so of a Group 1 carcinogen per day.
Not the alcohol itself, bad enough, but the primary metabolite – acetaldehyde. Very unpleasant stuff that would get supermarket shelves cleared if found in products on those shelves.
Was my deletion fair…..

2. Balanced diet. In view of the fact that in Victorian England, it was possible to hire pineapples.
Not buy them. Borrow for a fee,
Reason being to ‘create an impression’ of wealth, good connections, taste and general well-to-do-ness at your posh party, reception whatever.
Similarly why folks surrounding the court of Elizabeth 1 would get their teeth painted black or removed. So they could appear to ‘be like the Queen’ in that they could afford/obtain refined sugar.
Likewise The Victorian Kitchen Garden usually attached to large wealthy stately piles.
Not so that the residents/owners of said pile(s) could enjoy a Balanced Diet but that they could show off their out-of-season vegetables and exotic fruits at likewise posh dinner parties/events.
All about status. Not health
Is this where the notion of a ‘balanced diet came from – the English Class System?
That got deleted too.

3. Salt – Again to do with the Class System.
Along the lines of

Oh dahling, *we* don’t use salt to flavour our food. We use herbs from Southern Europe and North Africa. *We* use spices from India and The Orient, salt is *so* vulgar.

Swank. Money, Elitism. Status. Control.

(I’d left the course then, it was doing me head in)

And we’re missing all through this thread so far – Comfort Food.
You know what is is and what its for.
Because sugar = glucose = carbohydrate releases Dopamine in our brains.
Sugar works on our Reward System. It makes us feel good, warm, fuzzy, happy and content.
No matter what we’ve been up to, carbohydrate will reward us for it.

We could have spent the whole day helping old ladies cross the road and going home to a big plate of pasta will says to us ‘Well done. You did good there”
we could have spent the day racing around in a V8 pickup truck, blowing smoke and mowing down old ladies as they crossed the road.
The big plate of pasta will tell us “Well done, you did good there”

Booze obviously does the same, its just a load more potent. Haven’t we all been guilty of celebrating something good/happy or ‘drowning our sorrows’ Booze covers both. As does sugar

Now, does anyone see how crooks, villains and other mendacious types (esp inside Climate Science) actually do manage to live with themselves?

Also, Dopamine covers up the stress hormone Cortisol.
You get it now?? Why all the fat people?

They’re using Comfort Food.
To alleviate the stress brought on by a greedy boss, an unhappy spouse, a financial calamity and certainly not least, the endless tsunami rules. regulations, advice and guidance coming from the legions of well-intentioned goody goodies that now inhabit every crevice of Government, science and education.

Not for the first time does Government Policy have exactly the opposite effect to that intended.

A lot of cattle feed is the cattle grazing on grasslands. Only a ruminant with four stomachs can turn grass into food, the rest of us would starve to death eating it. Also, grazing is good for the grassland to help maintain the structure and composition of the grassland. A win/win for both the earth and us meat eaters.

I come from Australia, where have huge areas that cannot be used for crops, but can be used for grazing.
I used to work in Indonesia. Indonesians are typically short. Indonesians used to ask, what is the difference in diet that makes there kids short and mine tall. The only difference, nutritionally, was the quantity of meat. It was telling that middle class Indonesians on high meat diets had tall kids.

The article supports my prejudice that the PC crowd are predominantly rich out of touch inner city lefties, who are very down on the poor.

It’s not meat per se that’s the issue, it’s complete proteins. That’s the point of the article Nuts and legumes are part of a complete protein; grains are the other – as long as they are whole grains. White rice doesn’t offer that, which is a problem when the diet of poor Indonesians is primarily white rice and veggies. It’s no surprise that adding meat changes things, but the author is saying that it doesn’t have to be meat to still provide balanced nutrition. Height is also dependent on other nutrients, calcium and vitamin A, for instance. Besides, I don’t think the article is recommending vegetarianism.

You are right – you have a prejudice. Changing recommendations to diets that include complete proteins from non-meat sources may be a way of helping the poor get the nutrition they need when they can’t afford meat, quite apart from the environmental impacts.

One of the Paleo arguments is that, seeing as we do not actually know that much about nutrition, we start by modelling on what we ate whilst evolving as humans. So it is not just about B12 this or protein that — there is the whole animal, nose to tail — and one does not have to look at nutrition long before realising it gets real complicated, real fast, with many pathways, and cycles, and basically, it is a highly complex system. And for the past 50 years, the science got not just a detail wrong, but entire food categories, wrong. Backwards even. So wrong that the more health conscious the person, the worse they ended up. So the best help we could probably give, is help people eat what their ancestors ate, as a general rule of thumb. And it is always funny when people have to add adjectives in front of words, like “healthy whole-grains” and “complete proteins” — you can bet that they are having to add that word because it does not actually belong there.

Vitamin B-12.
The only non-animal-derived source I’m aware is brewers yeast.
The symptoms of a vitamin B-12 deficiency can take 5 years to develop. It can resemble schizophrenia.
If you are a strict vegetarian, be sure you are getting B-12. A salad or a soy-burger won’t cut it.

“The study authors don’t suggest how poor people could be discouraged from eating environmentally harmful meat proteins. ” That seems to be the whole point of the article: changing dietary recommendations is the first step. Not the only step, but the author doesn’t contend that. Education would be the next step.

I don’t think the article is advocating vegetarianism, as some here seem to suggest.

oh, you’re right.
raising the specter the planetary destruction by meat is totally not the same as advocating vegetarianism –
where would anybody get that idea?
but it doesn’t really matter what these chubby useless authors think about how poor people should be deprived of food – the main thing is they have somebody who appreciates their wisdom
the point of the article is narcissism on a planetary scale.
if you gathered all their wit into a thimble, it would still just be a drop in the goatse.

For permission, contact us. See the About>Contact menu under the header.

All rights reserved worldwide.

Some material from contributors may contain additional copyrights of their respective company or organization.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on WUWT. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. This notice is required by recently enacted EU GDPR rules, and since WUWT is a globally read website, we need to keep the bureaucrats off our case!
Cookie Policy